


Ashes to Ashes (The Train that Goes to the Kingdom Remix)

by voodoochild



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Apocalypse, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Plague
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 23:10:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1567433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/pseuds/voodoochild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock finds trains soothing, even in the middle of plural apocalypses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes to Ashes (The Train that Goes to the Kingdom Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ishie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishie/gifts).
  * Inspired by [grubbing in the ashes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/522656) by [ishie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishie/pseuds/ishie). 



> Much love to E1 and E2 for the beta and the cheerleading. Funky Remix Subtitle from Nick Cave's "O Children".

_5/20/13 - T + 168 hours_

Sherlock finds trains soothing. 

You can calculate relative distance traveled by clocking the "clackityclack" of the rails, then multiplying by average number of boards per kilometre. The horns signal passing distance and track switches. Even the rocking of the carriages is soothing, no jerking or sudden starts or stops. There is very little left to chance.

The conductor of this particular train is one of Sherlock's contacts, and as soon as they board, Timothy sets them up with a first-class sleeping car. He drifts off to sleep almost immediately, hasn't really slept since Brooklyn, but Joan is still unconvinced of their method of travel - why did they let Gregson and Bell lead two separate escape teams in stolen F-150s if he and Mycroft don't trust the roads? 

He doesn't have the heart to tell her about the kill orders.

She finds out anyway, one of the other passengers, fugitives like they are. The woman recognizes Joan even under the bad haircut and floppy hat, and professes her admiration for the woman who helped expose Lake Placid, the woman who has a price on her head.

"Why the hell wouldn't you tell me something like that?!"

He sighs, turns over in the bunk to face her. "Did it change your mind? Make you more willing to believe me in regards to what was going on there? Are you more relaxed by being in possession of this knowledge?"

"That's not fair," she insists. "You should have told me. You haven't told me a single thing - I had to find out where we were from Gregson."

"Captain Gregson is - well, I suppose we can no longer call him Captain-"

"Argue nomenclature later, when I'm not angry at you for hiding things!"

"I didn't trust you," he says flatly. "I'm sorry. I should have. But to be fair, Joan - I don't trust _anyone_."

***

_5/16/13 - T + 57 hours_

He does pay attention to the news, no matter what Joan thinks. He knows what MSNBC and CNN and every other major news station is reporting, has seen the red eyes and enlarged blue veins of the afflicted, watched the riots in Times Square and the quarantine of Whitehall. 

"CNN's declared the plural of apocalypse is 'apocalypsi'," Joan remarks, eating spaghetti out of a mug. Despite her protestations, she clearly likes it more than she initially did if she's falling back on it as a comfort food.

That gets his attention away from the book on beetle larvae he's reading.

"Someone's got a television working?"

She shakes her head, slurps a noodle. "No, one of the Calloway girls in 317C was showing me her Twitter. I didn't login, in case you were wondering."

"I wasn't."

"Because I've been careful, Sherlock."

He knows she has.

"Apocalypsi?"

Joan nods.

Sherlock throws a dinner plate at the wall in protest of the stupidity. It doesn't help.

***

_5/17/13 - T + 98 hours_

He goes with Joan to his father's safe house not out of a misguided attempt at saving their lives, but because he knows his father - and Mycroft - better than anyone.

The bio-plagues that have hit New York and London aren't isolated phenomena. They are two of the most populous cities on the planet, but they're the dry run. Hire biologists to develop two of the most terrifying plagues the modern world has ever seen, release the contaminants into a given population, and take copious notes of what the results are. Burn after reading, reset for phase two.

He isn't suggesting they're to blame. For one, they're not capable of acting on this great a scale. 

But money talks, and the people who are behind these plagues would certainly find uses for a man who owns properties across half the known world and another man whose contacts range from minor royalty to gunrunners.

He goes, but he takes precautions.

***

_5/18/13 - T + 110 hours_

The safe house is somewhere in the Adirondacks, not far from Lake Placid judging by the half-destroyed freeway signs. Humanity is in a state of paranoia; are they infected? Are you infected? Those who own guns are carrying them openly, sales have skyrocketed, and even Joan's beginning to wear her baton at her belt. 

Joan Watson is an interesting addition to the algorithm. Apocalypse narratives place an importance on people like her - a doctor, useful for medical knowledge as well as the application and practice thereof; empathetic and trustworthy by the great majority of people, yet rational enough to provide her with a measure of calm that must seem reassuring. He himself is, of course, not reassuring in any sense of the word and too much a pragmatist for most people. One would think they'd balance out.

They don't.

Joan is still too cautious, too willing to trust in authority. He is still too abrasive a personality. Joan will not question, he will not stop questioning. They are still too new in their partnership to reach a true equilibrium.

The logical side of his brain knows there will be a breaking point. He resolves to keep from pushing for one, for he has no desire to hurt her, but if he's right about his father and Mycroft, about this "safe house", then the issue will be forced one way or another. 

There isn't an outcome he can think of that doesn't end with them separated, rather permanently.

***

_5/18/13 - T + 115 hours_

They are received by the honored select, those people Father and Mycroft have deemed worthy of saving. Practical people, Joan's mother and brother to keep her loyalty and Captain Gregson and his wife along with Marcus and Andre Bell to keep Sherlock's own. Mutual friends such as Ms. Hudson and Alfredo. There are others that he does not know - a geneticist from Harvard, an Oxford professor of archaeology, a chef-turned-chemist from Caracas. 

Sherlock does not wish to speak to any of them. He has work to do.

He holes himself up in the attic, maps and equations and photographs he'd smuggled out from the brownstone, the rest of his research painstakingly recreated from memory. He allows Joan into the room, but locks everyone else out. Mycroft, of course, picks the locks and has his former MI-6 goons threaten Sherlock unless he shares his research, which is when Sherlock realizes why he's been brought to the safe house at all: in all their infinite wisdom, Father and Mycroft have misplaced the geneticist who created an antigen.

Their temporary apocalypse will become rather permanent unless Sherlock can locate Dr. Bertram Ellington.

Despite his antisocial tendencies, Sherlock rather likes this world, and does not wish to allow his egotistical father and manipulative brother to ruin it any further. He and Mycroft come to an agreement - he will find Ellington and acquire the antigen, Mycroft will conceal his whereabouts from Father and those who want Ellington dead.

He assumes he will be making this trip alone. 

He assumes wrong.

Joan, utilizing her newfound deductive skills, figures out what he and Mycroft are up to, and insists that Mycroft help more openly. If they can get to Ellington's last known location, they can find him, and if he's injured or been exposed to the bio-plagues, Joan can treat him as much as possible - keep him alive long enough for Ellington to give her the real antigen.

Oh, and has she mentioned she's taken photos of the medical laboratories he thinks he's hiding under the shed? Photos proving the bio-plagues are manmade, who's behind them, and that they've been testing both the plague ampules and potential antigens on human subjects. Photos she will release to every major news publication in the world if he doesn't help them.

Mycroft swears, on pain of Joan's displeasure, that he has a contact in the underworld that can get them into Canada. They'll be meeting this contact on the Amtrak Adirondack route - apparently not even the apocalypse can stop Amtrak - and they leave for the station at 0900 tomorrow.

***

_5/20/13 - T + 172 hours_

Joan returns from the restaurant car, wrapped in a blanket and bearing two mugs of completely awful coffee.

"Sarah Palin's declared herself a prophet."

"Really?"

Joan laughs, in spite of herself. In spite of everything. "She claims to have had visions of the bio-plagues. There's a group calling her "Oracle" now."

"One can only hope she doesn't end up in an _ampulla_ like the Cumean Oracle."

"Unlikely."

He concurs, but he enjoys the mental image it provides. The train is still soothing, but one of the other passengers has a crying baby, and he's given up on sleep for the foreseeable future. He's got the laptop he'd swiped from the safe house, and the train's wi-fi seems to be working, so he's editing Wikipedia - mostly to make himself feel better.

"Ms. Hudson almost got the television working before we left," Joan comments, blowing on her coffee. "She said she was jonesing for some Buffy and Channel 8 shows it all the time. Apparently it's good for cleaning."

"I have to agree with her."

"You watched Buffy?"

"The teenage slang was fascinating, their grasp of demonology and mythos amusing, and Spike's British accent makes me want to throw myself through a window. Naturally, I watched it all on Netflix one week in rehab. Much more therapeutic than group chat."

"I always kind of wanted to be Buffy," Joan says, and he smiles. He can imagine her with a stake. The gymnastics would come easily, should she wish to develop them. "You could be my Watcher, you're British."

He agrees, but only if he gets a shotgun.

***

_5/21/13 - T + 184 hours_

Mycroft's promised contact comes through, getting on the train at Albany. 

It's Jamie Moriarty.

Sherlock is _deeply_ wishing for that shotgun.

***

_5/21/13 - T + 185 hours_

"I have no reason to hurt you," Jamie insists, for the tenth time. He won't call her Irene. "You won't be able to cross into Canada unless you've a proper escort, and I won't turn you in because you're our best hope of retrieving Ellington."

"If you're not lying to us about having contracted BP47," Sherlock retorts, but Joan hisses at them both.

"Quiet!" She resumes listening to Jamie's lungs with a makeshift stethoscope, tapping on her back, and moving her fingers over the pulse in Jamie's neck. "Your pulse is rapid enough to indicate elevated blood pressure, and you have fluid in your lungs. You're in Stage 1 BP47."

"Yes, I did mention that," Jamie says brightly.

Sherlock ignores her as best he can, turning to Joan. "You're sure?"

"Without proper medical equipment? Yes."

Jamie sighs, pulls on her shirt and tosses her hair back. She still buttons her shirt the same way, middle-first, then the bottom two buttons, and finally the top button. Sherlock hates that he notices it.

"All right, now that we're all in agreement that I'm dying, let's get you across the Canadian border. Here's what we'll do."

***

_5/21/13 - T +190 hours_

Montreal already feels fresher, more alive than the country they've left behind; it helps not having a price on one's head. Jamie has further intel on Ellington's whereabouts, and they agree to head out for the address she's given them.

It's a trap, of course. Father's found out about Joan's threat, decided a kill order was useless unless he did the job himself, and sent his best men after them. Sherlock spots the strike team as soon as they arrive at the train station, and he finds himself with two choices.

Trust Joan or trust no one.

He backs her into the ladies' restroom at the station, ignoring the shocked gasps from passersby. Locks the door behind them.

"There are five men waiting for us out there. Jamie's tipped off my father. I would hazard a guess, given the manner in which they are armed, that they intend to kill us." Joan is silent, pale, and he tilts his head. "You told me that I should trust you. We can get out of this, but it's going to be difficult."

"What's your plan?"

She doesn't like it.

***

_5/21/13 - T + 191 hours_

One stolen contaminated blood sample from Lake Placid, which burns when he carefully pours it onto the fresh cut she's opened on his arm.

A bit of calisthenics to raise his blood pressure, a punch to the eye to further the ruse, and judicious application of the robin's egg blue liquid eyeliner he'd stolen from Jamie.

The strike team hesitates when he comes out, putting on the performance of his life, and it's enough to let Joan slip away with all of his accumulated knowledge of Ellington's real location and the rudiments of an antigen. She hates leaving him, had railed against it in that tiny bathroom stall, but she'd done it.

If anyone can find Bertram Ellington, it's Joan.

He supposes he'll now have to trust that his father's covetousness of his intellect will not outweigh his previous desire to wipe his younger son off the face of the Earth. Mycroft will do what he can in the shadows, it's how he works best, but Sherlock doesn't like leaving so much to chance and his father's whims.

Trust, he's finding, isn't pleasant.


End file.
